Axial to test suburban market with $34M ask on Vernon Hills office

Boulder Group marketing fully occupied property

From left: The Boulder Group's Randy Blankstein and Jimmy Goodman with 75 North Fairway Drive
From left: The Boulder Group's Randy Blankstein and Jimmy Goodman with 75 North Fairway Drive (The Boulder Group, Getty, Loopnet)

A Minnesota real estate firm is testing Chicago’s suburban market with a listing of a fully leased office building in Vernon Hills.

A venture of Axial Real Estate Advisors has listed the 189,686-square-foot property at 75 North Fairway Drive for $31.4 million, Crain’s reported. The Boulder Group’s Jimmy Goodman and Randy Blankstein are marketing the property on Axial’s behalf.

The listing comes at a time when the suburban office market is struggling. Nationwide, suburban office property sales dropped 12 percent through November this year, compared with the same time period last year, according to MSCI Real Assets.

The largest tenant at the 25-year-old building in Vernon Hills is a division of medical device company BD, which has a lease for about 75 percent of the property through November 2026. Pharmaceutical company AbbVie’s lease for the remaining space is set to expire at the end of next October.

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Axial is also trying to sell another office building in the Chicago area. The 210,533-square-foot Bannockburn Corporate Center at 3000 Lakeside Drive in suburban Bannockburn is under contract to be sold, with the buyer and price so far undisclosed.

While the office market has been hit hard by the pandemic, investors are still attracted to properties with long-term tenants. Toronto-based Slate Office recently bought a 197,527-square-foot Lake Forest office building that’s occupied by Pfizer for $19.8 million. In addition, Nashville-based Montecito Medical paid almost $28 million for a three-story office building in Rosemont that’s fully leased to Advocate Aurora Health subsidiary ACL Laboratories.

The Axial building is located in the Continental Executive Park, just south of Vernon Hills’ Hawthorn Mall, which is in the second phase of a massive $252 million redevelopment. Mall owner Centennial Real Estate has been working on expanding the grand plaza, adding new retail and restaurant space and 255 luxury apartments.

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